Journal Press India^®

           It gives me immense pleasure to present this issue of FOCUS along with the news of inclusion of FOCUS in the UGC CARE list of journals. This is an endorsement of our commitment to conform to highest standards of ethical and value-based publishing. I thank all our authors, reviewers and readers for their continuous support and feedback that has enabled our team to improve various dimensions of the journal content and quality.

             With this issue, we have again made an attempt to make the journal scope interdisciplinary by including some papers that discuss implications of areas such as political relations and reporting practices on international business. The mainstay of the issue remains the integral components of IB such as trade and investment. This issue has three papers on varied aspects of foreign direct investment (FDI). The paper by Prof. K. V. Bhanu Murthy, Dr. Deepa Saran and Dr. Meghna Malhotra examines whether foreign and domestic firms can be distinguished from each other on the basis of their behaviour in terms of the factors that are considered to be the determinants of spillover effects from foreign firms to domestic firms. Using logistic regression, their results show that it is fairly evident that foreign firms behave differently from domestic firms in terms of spillover effects.  Another paper by Ms. Komal and Prof. Madan Lal examine the role of FDI in poverty reduction in India. Their analysis and results suggest  that bringing more FDI flows is no perfect recipe for alleviating poverty, but it can have a positive impact on poverty reduction, provided that desired mechanisms are in place in the host country to have these positive effects. Dr. Sonal Katyal and Dr. Geetika, in their paper, empirically investigate the linkages between FDI and economic growth for EAGLEs (Emerging and Growth Leading Economies). The results of the study based on time-series framework suggest that most of the countries falling under the facets of EAGLEs have strong long-run inter-linkages between FDI inflow and economic growth.

               The paper on prospects of India’s exports by Dr. S. P. Sharma and Ms. Ashima Dua, analyses India’s position in the world trade among the top twenty five export items from India. By ascertain the leading competitors in the same product categories, they bring out India’s strengths and possible opportunity areas that could foster enhanced exports growth. Dr. C. C. Amake and Dr. K. O. Ogiedu, in their paper on firm characteristics and financial performance of non-financial companies in Nigeria, find that firm characteristics mechanism such as firm size, growth opportunity and firm age all have a positive and significant relationship with financial performance, while firm leverage, capital intensity, and inventory intensity have a negative but significant effect on financial performance of non-financial quoted firms in Nigeria. 

           Some papers in this issue highlight the interdisciplinary aspects of IB with other areas of business and world economy. The paper on ‘Russian Factor in the Syrian Civil War’ by Mr. Ejaz Ahmed and Dr. Nagalaxmi M. Raman investigates the multifarious global effects of the Syrian Civil War. It points out that one of the most crucial factors that led to the failure of US intervention in Syria is the Russian support, both political & military.  Mr. Guneet Singh Sudan and Dr. Versha Mehta, in their paper, examine the adoption of e-government system via self-efficacy, trustworthiness, social influence, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, and performance expectancy in effecting behavioural intention towards government organizations in Jammu and Kashmir, India. This research utilized unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model, which has been extended to include self-efficacy and trustworthiness. Another paper by Mr. Abhishek N. and Prof. M. S. Divyashree on ‘Integrated Reporting Practices in Indian Companies’  analyses the current status of IR in Indian context and the compliance level of IR disclosures by selected companies. Prof. Pardeep Kumar, Dr. Charu Saxena and Ms. Mandeep Kaur focus on examining the interlinkage between some of the popular stock markets of the world. Using Johansen cointegration framework, their results could not validate the strong presence of the interlinkage among these stock markets.  

           This issue of FOCUS also has a review paper by Mr. Ranjeet Kumar Mishra that examines the impact of working capital management on the firm’s financial performance. Reviewing a total of 63 empirical research works from 36 developed and developing countries of the world, the author observes that frequency of negative impact is very high in comparison to that of positive and insignificant impact. He also reveals that most of the past studies examine linear relation between working capital management and firm’s performance.

          I thank all the contributors for stimulating discussion on pertinent issues in international business and hope that this issue makes for an interesting and insightful reading for all.

Dr. Niti Bhasin

           Editor